Lawyers argued the wealthy NZME director was the real mastermind behind a failed defamation action and should be forced to pay up. The costs hearing for a case supposedly taken in the name of free speech began with a call for enforced silence. Chris Patterson, a lawyer acting for the billionaire NZME director Jim Grenon, argued his client’s reputation could be unduly harmed by the journalists from TVNZ, Stuff, NZME and The Spinoff lined up with their laptops in the back row of Auckland District Court’s public gallery.